Culturomics is emerging as an important field within science, as a way to measure attitudes and beliefs and their dynamics across time and space via quantitative analysis of digitized data from literature, news, film, social media, and more. Sentiment analysis is a culturomics tool that, within the last decade, has provided a means to quantify the polarity of attitudes expressed within various media. Conservation science is a crisis discipline; therefore, accurate and effective communication are paramount. We investigated how conservation scientists communicate their findings through scientific journal articles. We analyzed 15,001 abstracts from articles published from 1998 to 2017 in 6 conservation-focused journals selected based on indexing in scientific databases. Articles were categorized by year, focal taxa, and the conservation status of the focal species. We calculated mean sentiment score for each abstract (mean adjusted z score) based on 4 lexicons (Jockers-Rinker, National Research Council, Bing, and AFINN). We found a significant positive annual trend in the sentiment scores of articles. We also observed a significant trend toward increasing negativity along the spectrum of conservation status categories (i.e., from least concern to extinct). There were some clear differences in the sentiments with which research on different taxa was reported, however. For example, abstracts mentioning lobe finned fishes tended to have high sentiment scores, which could be related to the rediscovery of the coelacanth driving a positive narrative. Contrastingly, abstracts mentioning elasmobranchs had low scores, possibly reflecting the negative sentiment score associated with the word shark. Sentiment analysis has applications in science, especially as it pertains to conservation psychology, and we suggest a new science-based lexicon be developed specifically for the field of conservation.

El Análisis de Opinión como Medida de la Cultura de Conservación en la Literatura Científica Lennox et al. Resumen La culturomía está emergiendo como un campo importante dentro de la ciencia pues es una manera de medir las actitudes, creencias y sus dinámicas a través del tiempo y el espacio por medio de un análisis cuantitativo de datos digitalizados a partir de la literatura, las noticias, las películas, las redes sociales y otros medios. El análisis de opinión es una herramienta de la culturomía que, en la última década, ha proporcionado los medios para cuantificar la polaridad de las actitudes expresadas en varios medios. La ciencia de la conservación es una disciplina de crisis; por lo tanto, la comunicación certera y efectiva es de suma importancia. Investigamos cómo los científicos de la conservación comunican sus hallazgos por medio de los artículos en las revistas científicas. Analizamos 15,001 resúmenes de artículos publicados entre 1998 y 2017 en seis revistas enfocadas en la conservación que fueron seleccionados con base en los índices de las bases de datos científicos. Categorizamos los artículos por año, taxón de enfoque y el estado de conservación de la especie focal. Calculamos la opinión promedio para cada resumen (puntaje z ajustado a la media) con base en cuatro lexicones (Jockers-Rinker, National Research Council, Bing y AFINN). Encontramos una significativa tendencia positiva anual en los puntajes de opinión de los artículos. También observamos una tendencia significativa hacia el incremento en la negatividad a lo largo del espectro de categorías de estado de conservación (es decir, de aquellas de menos preocupación a aquellas en peligro crítico o extintas). Sin embargo, hubo algunas diferencias claras en las opiniones con las cuales se reportaron las investigaciones sobre los diferentes taxones. Por ejemplo, los resúmenes que mencionaron a los peces de aletas lobuladas tendieron hacia los puntajes altos de opinión, lo que podría relacionarse con el redescubrimiento del celacanto como causa de una narrativa positiva. En contraste, los resúmenes que mencionaron a los elasmobranquios tuvieron puntajes bajos, lo que refleja el puntaje de opinión negativa asociado con la palabra tiburón. El análisis de opinión tiene aplicaciones en la ciencia, especialmente como parte de la psicología de la conservación, y sugerimos que se desarrolle un nuevo lexicón basado en la ciencia específicamente para el campo de la conservación.

Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences Institute of Hydrobiology Na Sádkách 702 7 37005 České Budějovice Czech Republic

Department of Zoology University of Oxford 11a Mansfield Road Oxford OX1 3SZ U K

Faculty of Science Department of Ecosystem Biology University of South Bohemia Branišovská 31a 37005 České Budějovice Czech Republic

Fish Ecology and Conservation Physiology Laboratory Carleton University Ottawa ON K1S 5B6 Canada

Insilicor Analytics 98 Caroline Avenue Ottawa ON K1Y 0S9 Canada

Institute for Conservation Research San Diego Zoo Global 15600 San Pasqual Valley Road Escondido CA 92027 U S A

NORCE Norwegian Research Centre Laboratory for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries Nygårdsgaten 112 Bergen 5008 Norway

Oxford Martin School University of Oxford 34 Broad Street Oxford OX1 3BD U K

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